Circular economy

Our world is crying out for effective recycling solutions and clean water. Awareness of environmental problems is increasing demands for a circular economy. Thanks to our shared knowledge and insights within the Vilokan Group, we can provide economically and environmentally sustainable solutions to help minimise the damage to the environment. What drives us is the desire to give the world a better environment. This is also the mission of the Vilokan Group.

Through in-house business areas and collaborations with or acquisitions of companies within the supply chain, we are assembling the pieces we need to fulfil our mission.

We need sustainable development

A growing population and increased economic activity are consuming the Earth’s resources at an accelerating rate. We need sustainable development and an economy based on a closed cycle – a circular economy.

The circular economy helps to restore our capital, whether it is economic, manufacturing, human, social or physical. This provides for improved flows of goods and services. In a circular economy, products are designed to be re-used while maintaining high quality in a technical and/or biological cycle. Production and transport use renewable fuels.

A linear economy, which is the prevailing standard in industry right now, is where a product is produced and sold to the user, to be discarded/incinerated after use on the principle ‘Produce – consume – discard’. This is an economy which is doomed to fail. The Earth has limited resources and this is clearly reflected in our present economic crisis. The prices of almost all raw materials have been rising constantly for the last ten years. We are paying more for food, metals, rare species and crops that are not grown for food (such as cotton). We are paying more because they are in short supply.

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Vilokan is creating a new global market

The Vilokan Group was commissioned to recover glycol at all of Sweden’s airports. This opens the door to a new global market, as there is increasing pressure on airport operators to take care of de-icing fluids and other liquid waste. Although de-icing a single aircraft can consume up to 1,000 litres of glycol, often with a lot of chemical additives, by no means all airports are taking care of these liquids.

Propylene glycol needs an incredible amount of oxygen to break it down, so this is an environmental problem. There is also cadmium and other heavy metals in the waste water and other liquids. So the question is no longer whether airports should start to recycle, but when.In an international comparison, Sweden and Vilokan have been pioneers in this area, and the Swedish Civil Aviation Administration was among the first to draw up plans for handling de-icing fluids and other liquid waste.But where de-icing fluids are collected for processing, in Sweden and elsewhere, the water is almost always taken by tanker for further treatment in a purification plant.Vilokan’s technology, on the other hand, means that both de-icing fluids and other liquid waste can be purified and recycled locally at the airport. As the technology is offered as a service, it allows the airport operator to handle environmentally hazardous waste without tying up capital in bespoke infrastructure.This eliminates the need for heavy transports, and Vilokan is able to establish a business based on glycol, a raw material that is traded around the world for between SEK 10 and 14 per litre. This means that Vilokan can set up a facility, clean the water and make a profit from the deal by providing access to the raw material. That creates a circular economy.